


our shadows taller than our soul

by scribblscrabbl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drama, Family Feels, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 17:44:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9082867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblscrabbl/pseuds/scribblscrabbl
Summary: Dean's still a ghost and Sam decides he's done playing by the rules.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is me getting on the bandwagon a decade late. Starts at the end of 2x01, In My Time of Dying. Please excuse all the liberties I take with the ideas of Death, Hell, etc. to make this work. The title is taken from Zepplin's "Stairway to Heaven," because Dean would approve.

"Son of a _bitch_."

Dean stares at the spot where the Reaper was standing before it went demonic on his ass – wearing those yellow eyes he's been seeing every time he closes his – then up and vanished.

The room's silent as the grave, and he spits out a few more choice words because now he's just pissed. He'd been good and ready to haunt Sammy through this life and into the next, having grown into the kind of man who, instead of making a hundred promises once, makes one promise a hundred times.

But something went wrong; he can feel it like a broken bone that didn't heal straight. Something –

He's waking up in his body, choking on the tube down his throat, then gagging as he pulls it up and out. A hand settles on his shoulder, warm and solid, and he knows it's his dad before he sees his face, heavy with all the miles he's racked up and all the miles left to go before he can rest easy.

"How you feeling, dude?"

"Fine, I guess," Dean rasps. "I'm alive."

He wants to say we'll win, in the end. He wants to say I wish I could carry all that weight for a while. He wants to say I'm sorry. Only, his dad says it first. His dad says he remembers all the times his boy comforted him when it should've been the other way around, sounding a little pained from being chewed up by a demon then spat back out, or maybe just from knowing that time only flows one way no matter how badly you want to bend it back.

And before Dean can get a word in edgewise, his dad reads his mind and says, "don't be scared, Dean," smoothes his hair down like he's eight years old again, then walks away.

Dean would run after him, grab his dad's hand and hold on tight like he's eight years old again, except that's when he blacks the fuck out.

*

"The edema's vanished, the internal contusions are healed, but still no signs of awareness. I'll be honest, I've never seen anything like it. We'll continue to monitor your brother's vitals, keep him comfortable, but you should know – the longer this persists, the lower the likelihood he returns to full wakefulness. I'd like you to have realistic expectations, Mr. Winchester."

Sam turns to the window and enumerates his losses until the doctor leaves him be. Mom. Mom, Jess. Mom, Jess, Dad.

Sam watches the sun rise over Jefferson City and doesn't make a sound.

*

The funeral pyre is the only source of light for miles. Sam stares at the flames licking and hissing their way up through the atmosphere, bone-tired but clear-eyed. He plans for tomorrow, meticulously, because, by now, he's learned something about survival, which is this: that grief is a continent, and the only way you make it to the other side is to keep your eyes on the road and keep moving, as fast as you can while still being able to breathe. It's something Dean excels at. Dean guns the engine with his hands steady on the wheel, no matter the breed of wild thing caged in his eyes. So Sam thinks tomorrow, he'll fix the Impala.

By which he means begging Bobby to fix the Impala before he starts going through Dad's paper trail detailing crop failures, electrical storms, patterns he can't make heads or tails of that get him thinking again about roads not taken. Thinking and staring at the unholy mess laid out on his bed until he feels himself veering off course, bound for something, someplace sure to eat him alive, and stumbles out of the house, half-blind like he hasn't seen daylight in weeks.

He makes his slow way to Bobby and the Impala, then stands there for a minute, just hovering, before pressing his palm against the metal for the first time since Dean tore into Jefferson City like a bat out of hell. Under the sun it feels hot, _alive_ , like maybe it's had Dean's heart under its hood all this time and Sam just needs to reach in and pull it out, put it back where it belongs.

He curls his fingers, nails scraping against the paint, and swallows.

"How's the car coming along?" he croaks, sounding like he hasn't spoken in weeks either.

"Slow," is the muffled reply before Bobby slides out. "She'd be in worse shape only if she'd been hit by a freight train."

"Dean – he'll owe you big time."

Bobby looks at Sam, understanding. In their line of work, they're rarely lucky enough to get to fight for a sure thing, which just means they learn to fight that much harder. And this, Sam thinks, is the damning proof that he's fucked in the head – because it's the empathy more than anything that makes him want to cry.

"Oh, don't you worry. I'll enjoy holding it over his head for a good, long while."

*

Dean sits on the edge of the bed watching Sam, hunched over those files for what must be the third straight hour, bleary-eyed and looking down for the count, face so goddamn young but eyes like he's been living for so long he's drowning in it.

And suddenly Dean can't take it anymore. Up until now he's kept quiet, muzzled by the shock and then the loneliness of being snapped back into spirit limbo built for one, but now he's starting to feel the ache, of wanting to be seen and heard, to touch and be touched. He thinks, distantly, as he takes a step towards Sam and then another, that it's a funny thing: you never realize what you take for granted until it's gone, and then you feel like someone's knocked a fucking hole the size of Texas clean through you.

"Sam. Sam. Sammy," he says, throat tight, before reaching out, hand stopping just short of Sam's nape where his hair's long due for a cut, curling soft and pretty like a girl's. Only, Dean knows the smell of it is all Sam and it doesn't make him think of anything but wide skies and open roads that all circle back home, like veins to a heart.

He feels hot, thinks he might be running a fever, as he drops his hand and it passes right through Sam. Who sucks in a short, sharp breath and jerks sideways, knocking half his files onto the floor.

*

" _Jesus Christ, Dean_."

For a second, Sam's brain, running on 45 minutes of something too anxious to be called sleep, tricks him into thinking everything's all right. That Dean's pranking him, trying to slide a dead fish down the back of his shirt, which is the kind of shit he pulled before Sam gained a three inch, twenty-pound advantage.

Then Sam presses the heels of his hands against his eyes and remembers where he is, why he doesn't hear the sound of his brother being an asshole, saying his name over and over again because he can't get out a complete sentence, he's laughing so hard.

"I'm losing it," Sam announces bleakly. Which is when he feels it again, something cold and clammy soaking through his shirt and into his skin. He's felt it before, dozens of times – just never this gently, never without a sudden, violent death or three, after.

He bolts out of his chair and digs through his bag until he finds the game, heart jackhammering in his chest, making him feel a little sick and split open. Dean. It must be Dean. Which means the Reaper hasn't taken him yet. Or, he's dead and stuck in this world, waiting for Sam to burn his bones, and Sam can't bring himself to calculate the odds, not yet.

"Dean?" He means to say it with some conviction; instead it comes out small and scared.

He positions his fingers on the planchette and waits.

YES

"Okay. Okay, okay."

He breathes, in, then out. He's usually the level-headed one, the one who has to hold his brother back from going Robocop on everyone's ass until he gets his answers. But Sam's finding it hard to exercise patience. Sam just wants to punch through all four walls and then start raising Hell so he can flush out that yellow-eyed motherfucker who took Mom away from them and then just kept taking.

Then the planchette moves again.

DAD DEAL

There's a second before the realization hits him right between the eyes, and he just sits there feeling dumbstruck, and then guilty as hell.

Of course. He's been too blind to see it until now, convinced this whole time that along the tortuous path to vengeance, their dad had lost the essential part of himself that made him, in his core, a good man, and a good father – lost, or buried so deep under all the blood and grime and demon gore there was no digging it back up. Turns out, Sam should've had a little more faith, and wasn't that the biggest goddamn irony of all. They'd reconciled for a total of four days before they ended up at each other's throats again. Only this time Sam can't take it back, can't say I get it, it eats me up too, I'm sorry, so they can meet in the middle and finally learn how to stay there. And maybe, maybe it couldn't have gone any other way, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel it like three rounds of rock salt to the gut, punching holes in him that aren't meant to be filled, only felt.

"Something went wrong," he finally says, then rubs at his forehead with two fingers. "I'll bring you back, Dean. I won't lose you. I can't lose you."

Normally, Dean has something to say to everything, but tonight, he says nothing at all.

*

Sam goes and makes himself a few friends at the Roadhouse Saloon, and Dean watches from a corner table, conflicted. On one hand they've got a lead on Yellow-Eyes McFuckerson, and Sam had to borrow a minivan to do it, which Dean's still cracking up about. On the other hand, they've got a lead and Dean's fucking _benched_ , which makes him grouchy as fuck because he can't give Sammy a piece of his mind when his brother says 'killer clown' with a straight face, or drag Sammy back to Bobby's by the throat for smiling so sweetly at the small perky blonde with the big-ass shotgun.

In the end he gets on the killer clown train, watching Sam tell Cooper, "I don't want to go to school, and I don't want regular. I want this," because, hell, Sam could get on the Oompa-Loompa train to Tinseltown and Dean would be the first in line – maybe third if he didn't want to look too easy. Which isn't to say the cat's not out of the bag, or that they'd be any better off shoving it back in; it's something he came to terms with somewhere between the day Sam packed his bags for Stanford and the day he broke into Sam's apartment, spouting some bullcrap about helping Dad when, in truth, it was Dean who needed saving.

That night, after killer clowns prove to be a bitch to waste, Sam sits with his back against the headboard, beer balanced on his knee, serving up a frown with a side of pout that tells Dean there's gonna be feelings for dessert. Which makes this the first time he's straight up relieved they haven't figured out verbal communication, because as painful as it is when Sam starts getting squishy, it's just downright terrifying when Sam turns those eyes on him, soft and demanding all at once, coaxing his heart to fall out of his mouth and right into the palm of his brother's hand.

But in the end, all Sam says is, "I'm choosing not to deal with it, okay? Not yet. Not until you're here with me."

*

Bobby restores the Impala in record time but Sam can't bring himself to drive it, or, hell, slide the goddamn key in, throat burning every time he thinks about an empty seat in place of Dean. Dean warbling to the radio, Dean drooling in his sleep, Dean touching Sam in little ways, which is Dean at his most eloquent, telling Sam _I got you_ , and _don't you ever leave me again_.

So Sam drives 300 miles to Red Lodge in a minivan, though not before turning to his right and saying, "not a _word_."

When it turns out to be vampires again, he tries to sniff out a lead at a local bar and ends up in the alley with his arm shoved against a guy's throat, feeling like he's the one running out of air because the last time he was closing in on a nest, he'd had family watching his back.

"Oh, for the love of – I'm not a vampire."

The trunk of Gordon's car is a goddamn armory.

"Sam Winchester. I can't believe it," Gordon says, looking like he's snared a unicorn, and it sends a frisson of unease down Sam's spine. "You know I met your old man once? Hell of a guy. Great hunter. I heard he passed, I'm sorry. And your brother. Shit, man. That demon you're after is a piece of work."

"Word travels fast," Sam says tightly, deciding he trusts Gordon about as far as he can throw him. Dean would like him, though, Sam can already tell. The classic car, the Lone Ranger attitude, the knives that come in every size. Dean would have a drink with the guy, trade stories, throw Sam a look that says _see? this is how you embrace the life_ , and in spite of all this, or maybe because of it, Sam says, "How about a beer?"

*

Under different circumstances, Dean would've liked Gordon well enough. He would've bought the guy a drink, traded stories, maybe felt for the first time in a long time that he wasn't being pulled in two directions, one towards what he's known most his life, the other towards what he's loved even longer than that.

But the way Sam's responding to Gordon is putting Dean on edge as they sit at their corner table with an empty chair between them. There's a smile dancing around the corners of Sam's mouth, but something skittish in his eyes only Dean can pick out; even with those four long years in between that'd stretched out like fourteen, Dean knows those eyes, better than he knows the curves of a woman or the heft of a shotgun.

Then Gordon goes and hammers the final nail in the coffin of their relationship by saying, "It's all black and white, there's no maybe. You find the bad thing, kill it. There's no time for shades of gray, Sammy. No need."

"Gordon, my man, talk about striking out _hard_ ," Dean says at the same time Sam responds with, "You don't get to call me that," body strung tight as a bow with none of the give, making Dean feel a flush of self-satisfaction.

An hour later, he'll wish he held onto that warmth a little longer, because things only go south from there.

*

By now, Sam knows what it feels like when the world gets turned around. When North becomes South, and the thing you trusted at the start is what betrays you in the end. So he takes it all in stride when Gordon stares at him like he's the psycho, slices into Sam's arm like he's drawing that line he sees so clearly between good and evil.

Which isn't to say Sam's not queasy and off-kilter the whole time he's scuffling with Gordon, tying him up, tight enough he won't be hunting anything for a few days, then telling Lenore to keep her foot on the gas until she's put a couple states between them.

The sickness in his gut doesn't ease, just spreads, malignant, as he climbs into the minivan and drops his forehead against the wheel for a minute, trying to breathe through it, before he turns the key.

He drives straight past the motel to the liquor store five miles down.

"That's right, Dean," he says after he parks. "I'm gonna buy the cheapest bottle in the place, get thoroughly plastered, and forget about how fucked up things are right now. And you can't do a thing to stop me, so the joke's on you."

It doesn't make any fucking sense, but he's feeling mulish and keyed up right now, blood simmering with residual adrenaline, wishing Dean was _there_ so he could pick a real fight, grab Dean by the shoulders and feel the muscle refuse to give. He wishes – except he can't. So getting plastered it is.

By the time he unlocks the door to the motel room and crosses the threshold, he's already twisted off the cap and taken a swig. Two feels less like he's scouring his insides with bleach, three's even smoother as he calls Ash and gets the news he's been expecting anyway. No leads, no signs, nada.

He flings his phone onto the bed and just stands in the middle of the room, thumbnail breaking the label on the bottle of Wild Turkey. The taste of it's improved since that first time six years ago, when their dad had told him to drink because the alternative was being stone-cold sober while he got the gash on his thigh cauterized with the iron from the motel bathroom. Dean had been tasked with holding him down, regardless, and, threaded through all the pain, he'd heard Dean promising, _I got you_ , sounding torn up and terrified and still so goddamn sure. But Sam left anyway. And he'd say he did it to keep that burden off his brother's shoulders, but that would make him self-sacrificing instead of selfish, which was a lie if he'd ever heard one.

"I'm sorry," he says suddenly, voice hoarse like the bourbon really did strip him raw going down. Slowly, he turns in a full circle. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm –"

He falls flat on his ass, then sits there, dazed, for a minute before shuffling over to the bed on his hands and knees to retrieve the game.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he whispers, taking another swig and getting more of it down his shirt than in his mouth.

The minute he drops his fingers onto the board, he starts to cry.

The tears come hot and quick, rushing out of him like they finally found the right crack in his chest and split it open with a fury. Except there's no relief, no catharsis, just a terrible thirst and a hollowness that make him keen, low in his throat.

The planchette jerks under his hands.

STOP IT

Sam almost laughs then, choking on his affection. He has to swallow a few times before he can get out a reply, wet and thick.

"The crying or the apologizing?"

BOTH

Sam doesn't have to see Dean to know which face he's wearing. Mouth sealed tight, jaw twitching, like Sam's waterworks are emasculating him by proximity, but eyes – eyes exposing him for what he really is: a sap, through and through, with a heart twice as big as he gives himself credit for. It's how Sam knows without being told that it's not a bullheaded refusal to go back on his word that stops Dean from leaving Sam, which is what he deserves; it's devotion, pure and simple in the way only Dean still has room for, gathered against his bones, for all he says he's fucked up beyond repair.

"I'm gonna get you back, Dean," Sam says, snot and tears still dripping. "I have to make it up you, man. I'm gonna stop being a selfish little shit, okay? We're in this together. We're supposed to – "

He squeezes his eyes shut, shoving his hands through his hair and sucking his next breath in through his mouth, deep and slow like that'll quiet the racket in his head. He thinks about their dad begging him to pull the trigger. Dean pale as a sheet, made small by all the sterile white. Ellen's Roadhouse Saloon. Motherfucking clowns. The gray area between right and wrong, life and death –

His eyes fly open.

*

Dean knows Sam's planning to do something stupid. He sees the fire relit in Sam's eyes, sending up smoke that's setting off every alarm bell in his head because anything stupid in Sam's book is stupid enough to get him killed, or worse. Too bad all Dean can do is pace the length of the motel room like a riled tiger in a cramped cage, watching Sam turn in and curl up on his side of the bed, the way he has every night for the last 12 nights, long, lean lines making Dean's fingers ache.

Only tonight Dean doesn't keep his distance. He walks over to Sam, need coupled with fear shredding his chest with steely claws. He thinks this must be what the Reaper meant when she said it'll drive him mad. Not the separation or the loneliness, the things dangled in front of him that he can't have, but the expectation that one day he won't remember what it was like to have them. The Impala purring under his hands. Warm summer rain washing him clean. Getting under Sam's skin about some small, stupid thing, just to watch that pretty flush work its way up Sam's neck. Getting his hands on Sam's skin and feeling the heat travel down to his bones so he remembers they've gone another day without the world caving in.

So tonight, he lies down on the bed opposite Sam and scoots over, close enough to count Sam's eyelashes.

He watches Sam breathe, still curled tight on his side – the clearest sign he's still awake because he's the world's sloppiest goddamn sleeper, not to mention a sneaky bitch about stealing the sheets.

Sam's eyes open then, wide and alert, staring straight ahead like he can see Dean clear as day, hear Dean griping about him without letting him have a say. His irises are dark as pitch but Dean knows it's all Sammy in there, mouth twitching, dimple peeking out and hooking Dean in by the heart.

"Remember the time I was so pissed at Dad I tried driving off in the Impala?" Dean says. It's easier pretending everything's still right with the world when every room looks about the same in the dark. It's why, while most kids got twitchy at night, Dean always thought it held something constant and comforting that was lost in the light of day. "I barely knew how to put her in reverse, ended up backing her into the closest telephone pole. And you tried taking the fall for me, Sammy. You made up some cock-and-bull story knowing Dad would see right through it."

He keeps talking until Sam drifts off to sleep.

*

The next day Sam heads back to Bobby's bright and early. He's barely through the door before he starts talking, babbling because he's terrified of giving Bobby an opening to play devil's advocate or worse, kick him out on his ass for being a goddamn idjit.

"I know it's insane, but it's the only plan I've got, and it's _Dean_ , Bobby. Dean would do anything for me, has already done everything for me, and I need, I _need_ to do this for him."

And Bobby listens and waits until Sam runs out of breath, and then says, "Well. Let's get a move on then. You think I got all day to help you test out your crackpot theories?"

They hole up in an empty room down the hall from Dean after Sam pays off a nurse for the necessary supplies and an orderly to watch the door.

"I'm giving you seven minutes, Sam. And then I'm gonna bring you back, whether you've got Dean or not."

Sam shifts on the bed and stares at the needle in Bobby's hand. _C'mon, Sammy, you gonna wuss out on me? If you need me to hold your hand, all you gotta do is ask_. That was the time Dean had gone with him to get his tetanus shot after one too many close encounters with rusty nails, rusty knives, rusty chainsaws – all par for the course when you spend nine days out of ten stomping through old shacks hunting for ghosts. Dean had discovered Sam's debilitating fear of needles and, because he was just as big of a pain in the ass then, teased Sam about it for weeks on end. The thing is, Dean would've done it, would've held his hand and let him crush every bone if it could've eased a fraction of his hurt.

"You hear me, Sam?"

When he looks up, it's Bobby hovering over him, not Dean. And he starts decelerating on that road that's supposed to keep him alive, scenery pallid and bleak and unchanged on all sides, barren of mile markers. He slows until the only detectable motion is the beat of his heart, and figures it couldn't have been any other way.

"Yea, Bobby. I hear you," he says. "Whatever happens – "

"You and Dean can thank me after," Bobby cuts him off, then sticks him with the needle before he sees it coming.

Sam's heart fails at 7:51pm on a Tuesday and, for the first time in his life, his brother's not there to save him.

*

"You crazy, suicidal son of a bitch."

It's not the only thing Dean's thinking when he touches Sam, spirit feeling like flesh and bone. There's _I could flay you alive_ , and _stand still so I can tear you a new one_ , and _I've missed you, so goddamn much_. But it's the thing that makes it out of his mouth as he grabs at Sam, and it'd pack more of a punch if he wasn't shaking, curling himself around his brother like he's been half-drowned at sea and Sam's dry land, telling him he can rest his bones.

"Dean, we don't have a lot of time." Sam's looking at him all damp eyes and soft mouth, thumb drawing a line down his cheek, and – damn it all to hell, he's crying, like a little girl who just found her lost puppy. "We need to find – "

"Me?"

The Reaper's there when they turn around, wearing the same skin as before: dark hair, pale skin, big almond eyes set in a heart-shaped face. Dean grabs a fistful of Sam's shirt, déjà-vu creeping in before the nausea.

"It's a stupid thing you've done, Sam," she says from the doorway, shaking her head. "Brave, maybe, but stupid. You come to Death willingly. How do you think this will end?"

"My dad made a deal. I need you to see it through. I'll even ask nicely," Sam says, the streak of smart-ass making Dean's chest hurt.

The Reaper has the goddamn balls to smile at Sam. "It's not my deal to fix. Azazel took John before Death could collect and broke the cardinal rule: a life for a life. So you can blame Death all you want, but he's nothing if not fair. Maybe your dad should've known better than to take a demon at his word."

Dean had known it all along in his gut, but hearing it out loud still knocks him sideways. Their dad didn't go peacefully, isn't lying on some white, endless shore drinking Mai Tais; he's chained up in Hell, where there's nothing but rivers of pain and death isn't a punishment, it's a reward.

Then he hears, over his labored breaths: "I was kind of hoping you'd say that. Because, frankly, I've had it up to here with playing by the rules."

Next thing he knows, Sam's dropping down on one knee, lightning quick, pulling a knife from his ankle, and letting it fly. Dad's knife – the one that never left his side with a history he didn't get around to telling them, a hand-carved hilt, and a pure iron blade that's never seen blood, only evil. It whips through the air and sinks into the Reaper's chest without a sound.

For a second she blinks down at it, making Dean think all Sam managed to do was piss her off.

Then she looks up and says, "well-played," before she disappears.

Dean wakes up in his body, choking on the tube in his throat.

*

The first thing Sam sees when the defibrillator jumpstarts his heart is Dean with a wildfire blazing through his eyes. That and enough life in him to go a few more rounds with the Reaper, to make sure Sam's soul belongs to him and no one else.

"Dean," Sam croaks out, then tries again after he's sucked in some more air and stopped feeling like he's still balanced on one foot on a tightrope between living and dying.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Sammy." He feels more than sees Dean burying his face in the curve of his neck, mouth hot and breaths pained. "I thought – I can't believe – don't you ever fucking do that again. This is the last goddamn time you decide to be a moron to save my ass, you hear me?"

He turns into Dean, palming the back of Dean's neck with one heavy hand, and _inhales_. There's the smell of latex, of disinfectant, but underneath all that: leather, engine grease, apple pie, _home_.

He traps a sob in his throat so he can say, "I can hear you."

"I hate to break up a truly moving reunion, boys, but we better hightail it – " Bobby starts before Dean cuts him off, shifting so his forehead's resting against Sam's collarbone.

"Bobby, man, with all due respect – I just need you to shut up right now."

Another minute passes before Sam feels Dean start to shake, crack from his foundations, built and rebuilt carefully, but not carefully enough, on gathering fault lines.

Sam tugs with both hands until Dean's sprawled on top of him, chest against chest, thighs against thighs, and says, so goddamn sure: "I got you."


End file.
